Judith Shakespeare
Character Analysis

is the imagined sister of William Shakespeare. Woolf creates her to show how a woman with talent equal to Shakespeare would not, because of the structure of society, be able to achieve the same success. Judith's life is fraught with tragedy – first pressured by her family into an early marriage, she must escape to London to free herself to pursue art, but is turned away with scorn from every theatre she approaches. She becomes pregnant, which makes a life of writing impossible, and she eventually kills herself. But later in the essay, Woolf brings back the ghost of Judith Shakespeare and tells the young women in the audience that they have the power to be the voice that Judith never had.

Judith Shakespeare Quotes in A Room of One's Own

The A Room of One's Own quotes below are all either spoken by Judith Shakespeare or refer to Judith Shakespeare. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

).
Note: all page numbers and citation info for the quotes below refer to the Harcourt edition of A Room of One's Own published in 1989.

Chapter 6
Quotes

Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the cross-roads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here to-night, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed.

Judith Shakespeare Character Timeline in A Room of One's Own

The timeline below shows where the character Judith Shakespeare appears in A Room of One's Own. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

Chapter 3

...being able to write the plays of Shakespeare. She invents a woman, Shakespeare's sister, named Judith Shakespeare , to investigate what would have happened if a woman had Shakespeare's gift. While William...
(full context)

Chapter 6

Finally, Woolf conjures the character of Judith Shakespeare again, who died and lies beneath the omnibuses driving the streets of London. But it...
(full context)